Page 648 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 11 February 2009
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it is important that all three parties in this chamber contribute to those terms of reference so that we come up with the best possible terms so that all the necessary issues are canvassed and so that this inquiry is effective in making the ACT’s freedom of information legislation the best and most modern in the country, one that takes advantage of new practices and new expectations of the community.
In speaking today, I have covered a lot of what I want to say about the government’s proposed amendments, which I believe Mr Corbell will bring forward. He has recently circulated those amendments. I will, however, be making a few specific comments on those proposals as they come up, to indicate our support or otherwise for them. I think the important thing to take out of this discussion today is that the ACT should be striving to be the best in the country. We have already heard, in light of the murder legislation last night, that all the other states are doing this and we should join them. I think that, here in the ACT, we should not be joining in the race to the bottom. We should be striving to be the territory, the jurisdiction, that is leading the pack with these sorts of pieces of legislation. That is the spirit in which I hope we will approach the freedom of information legislation.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo––Leader of the Opposition) (3.19): I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this legislation today. I commend my colleague Vicki Dunne for her efforts over a long time in seeking to drive through freedom of information law reform. She has been a consistent advocate of more open and accountable government. She has put that ideal into practice through legislation—legislation which has previously been rejected by the Labor Party. They refused to support it previously; we are looking forward to, hopefully, this going through today.
We believe this is a step forward, although only one step forward. There is a lot more work to do in terms of freedom of information law reform so that we can genuinely have openness and accountability from our government. Openness and accountability need to be forced on a government. They are something that they rarely sign up to voluntarily. We have seen that over the past few years. We are pleased to be able to push them along and try and open it up just that little bit more. We look forward to the inquiry that has been mooted. We look forward to that going ahead and seeing the possibility of more significant and more wide ranging reform to freedom of information.
But we need to look at the cynical way that this government has treated freedom of information law over the past few years. The Labor Party in opposition said a lot about freedom of information law reform. They came to office promising to be open and accountable; they came with a commitment to undertake reform of the FOI Act. If you look at what they have done over the past seven years, you will see that they have done some reform, but it was to make it harder to get documents. That was what Mr Corbell voted for. Our policy document A new way of listening quotes the Attorney-General, Simon Corbell; it is worth reading that into Hansard. It says:
… Attorney-General Simon Corbell pointed out that Labor had expanded on the excuses which officials could use for denying information from the public.
“I draw members’ attention to those clauses, in particular clause 7 (1A), whereby the agency or the minister must have regard to the number and
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